Carpenter Uses Learning Tools To Build Self-esteem In Pupils

As more than two dozen 3rd, 4th and 5th graders gathered around Perry Wilson on Wednesday with hammers in hand and tool belts slung around their hips, he laid down the laws of his construction site:

"I'm not your teacher. I'm your boss," Wilson said sternly. "If you don't listen and watch, I can fire you-and that's not just a threat."

He drilled his point by recounting that he was once forced to hand a pink slip to an ill-behaved boy in Kentucky.

As part of Wilson's "If I Had a Hammer" program, the pupils from Sawyer School on the Southwest Side were assigned the momentous task of building a one-room house at the Chicago Children's Museum in less than two hours.

They picked up a lesson or two about life and learning.

"Carpentry is a way to get kids to do complicated math and geometry problems that they might never be able to do on paper-or which they have convinced themselves they would never be able to do on paper," said Wilson, who grew up in Memphis.

He himself considered school one long ordeal. He became literate only after high school, when he became a carpenter and learned to read by studying blueprints. He picked up math by measuring plywood and roof angles.

In between spurts of work on the house, he posed questions to the kids: "If you have 30 people and they are being paid $10 an hour, how much is it going to cost if they take two hours to build a house? What if it took four hours?"

The children, who were decked out in painter's caps and goggles, piped up with answers ranging from $60 to $1,200, as their boss explained that without full concentration and a willingness to follow orders, the job would end up being much more expensive.

With tools and construction materials donated by a national chain of home-supply stores and volunteers from the stores, Wilson has been taking the 8-year-old "If I Had a Hammer" program to children's museums throughout the country. Joined by his adolescent subcontractors, he builds 8-by-11-foot houses-and an awareness of the relevance of book learning to real life and self-esteem.

After failing the 5th grade, Wilson said his own self-esteem was precariously low. Then his father enlisted him to build a treehouse.

"My dad did not ground me for failing. Instead he showed me that he still had confidence in me by asking me to build the treehouse with him," he said.

Beset by a learning disability and unable to read at the time, Wilson did not improve in school. But he did graduate and found his niche in carpentry.

"My dad would not let me give up, and his support helped me to eventually learn what I needed to," Wilson said.

His "Hammer" program was established in 1989 as a pilot project in a Nashville school. After receiving a $15,000 grant from the Nashville Institute of the Arts, Wilson constructed houses with groups from 40 to 50 middle schools in the Nashville area. Since 1993, the $1 million program has become a permanent fixture in five children's museums throughout the country, with Home Depot as its corporate sponsor.

The Sawyer School pupils seemed proud of their job Wednesday as they sat on the porch of their new house, although some had some trouble dragging their attention away from the power tools.

"Every time we put up a house, it is healing to me because I have a chance to see kids like me-who have had their troubles-discover what they can do," Wilson said.

Wednesday's workshop was aimed at introducing Chicago Children's Museum staff to the program, which will become permanent at the museum. Interested groups can reserve a two-hour building session through the museum.